The motor vehicle lock in question is assigned to a motor vehicle door arrangement which comprises at least a motor vehicle door. The expression “motor vehicle door” is to be understood in a broad sense. It includes in particular side doors, back doors, lift gates, trunk lids or engine hoods. Such a motor vehicle door may generally be designed as a sliding door as well.
The crash safety plays an important role for today's motor vehicle locks. It is of particular importance that neither crash induced acceleration nor crash induced deformation leads to an unintended opening of the motor vehicle door which the motor vehicle lock is assigned to. For example, in case of a side impact on the motor vehicle the outer door handle may be reluctant to follow the impact due to mass inertia of the outer door handle. As a result a relative movement between the outer door handle and the motor vehicle door occurs, which again may lead to an unintended opening of the motor vehicle door. Alternatively or in addition a crash induced deformation may act on the motor vehicle lock, which may again lead to an unintended opening of the motor vehicle door. The motor vehicle lock should be robust against all those crash conditions that may lead to an unintended opening of the motor vehicle door.
The known motor vehicle lock (US 2011/0181052 A1), which is the starting point for the invention, is provided with the usual locking elements catch and pawl, wherein the pawl may be deflected into a release position by actuation of a pawl actuation lever.
For deflecting the pawl into its release position, a pawl actuation lever is provided which, together with the pawl, establishes an actuation drive train for deflecting the pawl.
The motor vehicle lock comprises a switchable lock arrangement, which is located in the actuation drive train. Being in a locked state, the switchable lock arrangement blocks a drive train component, namely the pawl actuation lever. Being in an unlocked state, the switchable lock arrangement allows deflecting the pawl by an actuation of the pawl actuation lever.
To guarantee a high crash safety the switchable lock arrangement switches into the lock condition, when a predetermined crash induced acceleration occurs. As a result, during a crash, the switchable lock arrangement locks further actuation of the pawl actuation lever.
The known motor vehicle lock guarantees a high crash safety with respect to predetermined crash induced acceleration. However, during the blockage of the pawl actuation lever, a crash induced deflection of the pawl is still possible, for example due to crash induced deformation.
It is the object of the invention to improve the known motor vehicle lock such that the crash safety is increased with low constructional effort.